A Flavorful Road to New Physics?

The Department of Physics welcomes  Dr. Rafael Silva Coutinho to kick off their Spring 2021 virtual colloquia presentation series.

Abstract:  While the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics successfully describes all known particles and their interactions, it is broadly accepted that it is an incomplete description of Nature. Therefore, the search for new particles and interactions is among the dominant goal of experimental particle physics. In the past few years there has been an increasing interest in rare semi-leptonic decays of beauty mesons, mediated through virtual quantum loops, since an intriguing pattern of tensions with respect to the SM predictions is emerging, the so called flavour anomalies. Whilst the individual level of significance of the present results is still inconclusive, these appealing nontrivial deviations might be hinting to some new revolution in particle physics. In this colloquium, an overview of the latest results in this sector and the perspectives to understand the nature of these anomalies are discussed.